Kerrygold Butter

Today I baked cookies with Kerrygold Butter from Trader Joe's, which is one of the European Style butters with higher butterfat content. I warmed the butter to 74.5 degrees - actually, I overshot and it went up to 75.5 degrees - and then creamed for two minutes and mixed in the flour for two minutes, as with the other European style butter experiments.

The butter is interesting. Like the Plugra brand Eurpean style butter, it was not at all goopy even at the high temperature of 75.5 degrees. Unlike the Pflug butter, the cookies baked on the Wilton Everglide pan were not at all pitted. However, the cookies did spread a fair amount. Surprisingly, they even spread quite a lot on the Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Commercial Quality Cookie Sheet, perhaps more than with any other butter I've used. Spreading isn't necessarily bad, certainly not for all recipes, but I like these cookies better when they keep their shape, which includes retaining the air pockets within the dough.

Now, there's a small problem - I ran out of Pillsbury Best All-Purpose Flour, and when I bought more I accidentally bought Shurfine All-Purpose Flour instead. Guess I wasn't paying enough attention. I didn't have enough money today to go buy the right flour, so I used the Shurfine flour. I doubt it had any impact at all, but I guess I can't prove that right now. I'll have to use this flour with the remaining European style butter as well. I noticed the Shurfine flour feels a little "heavier" somehow when I was using the whisk to stir it up in the bowl. But of course, I measured the same weight of flour out as always. Hopefully it isn't skewing my results. I'll know for sure when I make an additional batch with Land 'o' Lakes butter.

The resulting cookies aren't quite as good as some of the best of the others. They aren't quite as "light" and melt-in-your-mouth. I think that's related to the spreading and loss of air pockets. They were fairly dense. Not hard, but it took a stronger bite to get a mouthful. They are very good, but at this point I wouldn't choose it over Land 'o' Lakes butter, especially considering its cost. But I do need to do a final taste test making a direct comparison.

I've misplaced my paper with the measurements for kerrygold butter. I'll report them later when I summarize my experimental results with the European Style butters - if I find the paper!